1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wireless input apparatus and method, and it particularly relates to a wireless input apparatus that is provided as an attachment with electronic equipment and remotely controls the electronic equipment using a wireless communication means.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electric home appliances such as a TV set, a video, and an air conditioner are controlled remotely. For instance, a remote control for a TV set has a power button, channel buttons to change channels, and volume control buttons to turn up or down the volume level. These buttons are arranged on the body of the remote control. In front of the body, an infrared transmitting unit is provided in order to send a signal to the TV set. When a user presses down any button, predefined command data corresponding to the pressed button are generated by a CPU inside the body, and the data are transmitted to the TV set via the infrared transmitting unit. Thus, the user can remotely perform various types of controls such as power on/off, channel switching, volume adjustment and the like, by operating the various kinds of buttons on the remote control.
A remote control of a video tape recorder has other types of buttons arranged such as play, record, stop, rewind, forward and the like. A remote control of an air conditioner has types of buttons arranged such as for switching between heating/cooling or adjusting temperature. Thus, the buttons arranged on the remote control differ very much in their arrangement, types, and number, depending on the equipment under control.
In addition, recent electric home appliances become intelligent with a built-in microprocessor, and a stage is coming to investigate an in-home network to interconnect electric home appliances as well as personal computers.
Under these situations, the number of the electric appliances that the user operates increases and the user operation is becoming complicated. Different remote controls are attached with the electric appliances and each of the remote controls has different types of buttons in a different arrangement. Therefore, it is very annoying for the user to remember its operation. Moreover, as the buttons increase in type and number, the size of the remote control becomes large. For instance, in order a letter to be input to the equipment using the remote control, the remote control must have 26 buttons for alphabets arranged on the body and its operability will be very worse. For this reason, a method is taken to decrease the number of the buttons, for instance a way of realizing different operations by a simultaneous operation of multiple buttons or a combination of specific buttons. However in this case the user must remember the combination of the specific buttons and the user operation becomes complicated.
Since generally one button on a remote control corresponds to one command data, many buttons or switches are necessary to accommodate various kinds of functions for controlling the equipment. Therefore, its operability is likely to be lost because of the complexity and the bulkiness of the remote control.
The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned problems, and an object thereof is to provide a wireless input apparatus and method by which a user can input various types of information without many buttons or switched arranged on the apparatus.
According to one aspect of the present invention, a wireless input apparatus is provided. The apparatus includes a pointing device, a signal process unit, a pointer control unit, a process execution unit, and a wireless communication. The pointing device detects three-dimensional components of an externally applied pressure. The signal process unit defines a moving direction of a pointer based on an x-axis component and a y-axis component of the pressure, and detects whether the pointer is pressed or not based on a z-axis component of the pressure. The pointer control unit moves a position of the pointer based on the defined moving direction. The process execution unit generates a predefined command data when the pointer is pressed. The wireless communication unit transmits the command data to an external device using a wireless communication means.
The wireless communication unit may transmit the command data to the external device if said command data are data to be sent to the external. The signal process unit may judges that a pointer is pressed if the z-axis component of the pressure exceeds a predefined threshold. The signal process unit may detect the amount of the z-axis component of the pressure and judge the amount at multiple levels, and the process executing unit may generate different command data, depending on the level of the amount of the pressure.
The pointing device may include an operational part to which a three-dimensional external pressure is applied, and a sheet-like pressure-sensitive resistance member which detects the three-dimensional applied pressure.
The sheet-like pressure-sensitive resistance member may have a mesh pattern of electrodes on its surface that detect the three-dimensional components of the pressure. The sheet-like pressure-sensitive resistance member may have a mesh pattern of a plurality of electrodes on its surface each of which detects any one of the x-axis, the y-axis, and the z-axis components, and the signal process unit may convert analog signals obtained from the electrodes in the mesh regions to digital signals in a time divisional manner.
The signal process unit may perform timing control to form an output path for each of the electrodes of a signal from an i-th row of the electrode, and further perform timing control to select a j-th column of the electrode and to obtain an output value of the signal from the electrode in the (i,j) mesh region, and thereby detect a two-dimensional distribution of the output signals from the mesh pattern of the electrodes.
The sheet-like pressure-sensitive resistance member may have a mesh pattern of a plurality of electrodes on its surface each of which detects either the x-axis or the y-axis component, and each of the mesh has an electrode to detect the z-axis component of the pressure.
The sheet-like pressure-sensitive resistance member may have a fan-shaped pattern of electrodes on its surface that detect the three-dimensional components of the pressure. The sheet-like pressure-sensitive resistance member may have an electrode to detect the z-axis component of the pressure is arranged at a central part of its surface, and a fan-shaped pattern of a plurality of electrodes each of which detects either the x-axis or the y-axis component of the pressure surrounding the central part. A plurality of electrodes to detect the z-axis component of the pressure may be distributed in the regions of the x-axis and the y-axis electrodes arranged in the fan shape.
The apparatus may further include a display unit that displays an operation button to direct a command, and the display unit may display the pressed-down operation button when it is detected that the pointer is pressed down at the operation button, and the process execution unit may generate a predefined command data corresponding to the operation button.
According to another aspect of the present invention, a wireless input apparatus is also provided. The apparatus includes a pointing device which detects three-dimensional components of an externally applied pressure, a pointer control unit which controls a pointer based on the detected three-dimensional components of the pressure, a display unit which displays the pointer on a operational screen for a user, and a wireless communication unit which transmits a command specified by the pointer to an external device using a wireless communication means. As this pointing device, any of the pointing devices having the above-mentioned configurations may be used.
According to still another aspect of the present invention, a wireless input method is provided. The method includes displaying a screen to prompt a user to operate, detecting three-dimensional components of an external pressure applied to a pointing device, defining a moving direction of a pointer based on an x-axis component and a y-axis component of the pressure and moving the pointer on the screen, detecting whether a pointer is pressed down or not based on the z-axis component of the pressure and generates a predefined command data when the pointer is pressed down, and transmitting the command data to an external device using a wireless communication means.
Moreover, any arbitrary combination of the above-mentioned structural components in the present invention is still effective as an embodiment when applied as a method, a sensor, and a system and so forth.
Moreover, this summary of the invention does not necessarily describe all necessarily features so that the invention may also be sub-combination of these described features.